Personal Essays (Part 2)

I'm back from a little break from blogging! I forced myself to take a much needed break from everything teaching related so I could spend more time with family and check some things off my wedding planning list! I'm happy to say I was productive so now I'm back!

I wanted to share more on my previous Personal Essay post that I started HERE. My students were able to finish publishing these before our winter break started and I'm happy to say that it is still their favorite unit!

So after we organized our thesis statements and reasons onto the blue organizational folders which I explained in the previous post, we took out the evidence we had collected in each folder. We decided which pieces of evidence to keep and which were not needed. We pasted them onto the now open blue folders into an order that made sense. Here is a rough draft…

This is an example of a rough draft that we started editing but of course this isn't the published piece. You can see we turned our boxes and bullets into topic sentences.

We did this for each blue folder and ended up with a long strip which included our intro, three reason paragraphs, and our conclusion.

This made it very easy to revise, edit, and publish our final draft!

Here's an example of a published essay..

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Now that we've completed this unit, the students are very familiar with the structure of a five paragraph essay! This will make starting our response to literature unit when we get back SO much easier!

I have a personal essay rubric posted in my store here for $1.00 if you are interested in this unit! I'd love to hear from you if you've done this or something similar!

Silence for Sandy Hook

Personal Essays

We are in the middle of our personal essay unit right now so I thought I'd share what we have been working on. Teaching a unit on personal essays is a fun way to teach students the structure of a five paragraph essay. They write about a topic that they already know about so no extra research is involved. We spent some time collecting ideas for what we could use as our thesis. We spent about a week in the "collecting" phase. This was all done in our writer's notebooks. Once students have their idea/thesis, they come up with three reasons to support it.

A neat way to organize their "evidence" for each of their ideas is by using folders. I give each student  colored folders, one for each of their reasons.

We spend one day collecting evidence on each of these reasons. The evidence is collected on lined paper, cut, and placed into the appropriate folder. Once they have a good amount of evidence, I spend a day on the introduction and another on the conclusion. The students have their folders next to them as they are writing these so it is very easy for them to restate their thesis and reasons in each.

This is where we are so far in our unit! Our next phase will be determining what evidence we should use and pasting it on the outside of the appropriate folder. Our finished product in our planning phase ends up looking like a long strip of folders, but with each of the five paragraphs organized in order. 

So far my students LOVE this unit! Their thesis statements are hilarious! I'm seeing everything from "Dogs make great pets" to "Siblings can be annoying". As long as they can come up with their three supporting reasons, it is an acceptable thesis!

Does anyone else use the personal essay unit to teach essay structure? I'd love to hear about it if you do! I will post more once we complete the unit!

A Giveaway!

I can't believe I've reached over 50 followers! I began blogging not knowing where it would take me and I'm absolutely thrilled I did! I've become a better teacher and I love all of the feedback and comments from all of my wonderful followers!

As a thank you, I'm having a giveaway! The first two followers to comment can choose anything they'd like from my store! Just be sure to tell me what you'd like and send me your email!

If you are still looking for some fun holiday activities, you might be interested in my holiday centers.

My math centers that include 60 task cards are appropriate for grades 4-5.

My holiday writing center pack is appropriate for grades 3-5.

I've also bundled these together though (for a cheaper price) in my store too!

Feel free though to choose ANY item from my store for the giveaway!

Thanks again for helping me reach 50 followers!!!

Have a great weekend!

December Currently

I was just saying yesterday that I can't believe December is here! I guess it's official now that I've done Farley's December Currently…

My goal was to be super productive today. I'm clearly procrastinating by watching TV and blogging. 

December sure snuck up on me! I need to get back into my regular gym routine since these engagement photos are happening soon and I'm so not ready! (By the way, thanks to all my sweet blog followers for all of the wedding wishes you've left me! I appreciate all of your kind words! :) ) Today was day one of my new plan…and I made it to the gym this morning. I'm hoping I can keep this going. I probably shouldn't have set that goal the week before parent conferences.

I'm loving my new holiday scented candle from Bath and Body Works. I went a little crazy there on Black Friday but I ended up finding some deals on gifts there for my wonderful parent volunteers. Does anyone else give their volunteers gifts at the holidays? If so, what have you given? Sometimes I get creative and find cute little mugs to fill with goodies but this year I'm taking the easy route!

Happy December everyone! Time for me to get back to that list!

Holiday Math Task Cards

I'm still in shock that I had to change my classroom calendar to December for Monday! Where does the time go? This year needs to slow down! My to do list is wayyy too long right now! Well in order to get ready for the holidays, I've added and uploaded a new version of my math task cards to my store. Since my kids had so much fun with the Turkey Task Cards, I uploaded a holiday version of these! Just click below to check it out!

There are 60 task cards that cover a variety of concepts such as:

• Expanded form
• Rounding
• Finding the sum
• Subtraction with regrouping
• Simplifying expressions
• Finding the difference
• Division with remainders
• Evaluating expressions with variables
• Finding the product

These were a great activity for review for my 4th graders during my math centers! All of my groups were able to rotate in a week, although I probably could have made it last two weeks! These would also be great for low 5th grade students or a great challenge for your high 3rd graders! 

Answer keys are included as well as a student recording sheet! The table of contents also aligns each section to the Common Core Standards for you.

Please keep in mind that that if you purchased the Turkey Task Cards, these are the same, just a holiday version! I'll be uploading additional math concepts soon!

I'd love to hear about the holiday lessons, centers, or activities you are doing with your class! On our last day before our winter break we will be making gingerbread houses with our kindergarten buddies! I'm still planning my other activities for that day so I'd love to hear what everyone else has planned! 

Have a great weekend!

Cyber Sale…of course!

I'm so excited for the Cyber Sale tomorrow! I have tons of stuff that has been on my wish list all week by so many creative teachers out there on TPT! I can't wait to pick up all of these good finds! I have a lot of upper grade goodies from Ashleigh and Miss Nannini on my wish list that I'm really excited about! Of course I'll be joining in the fun and running a sale in my store too on all of my items!

Thanks to The School Supply Addict for the super cute button. 

In case you want to check some of my items out, here are a few of my top items…

A pack of word study sort ideas, organization tips, activities, and game ideas for Words Their Way ...(Grades 3-5).

A bundle of all of my personal narrative writing unit files, including 2 rubrics...

and my figurative language posters…

I hope everyone enjoys their Cyber Monday & Tuesday!